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<title>Five Times Love Was Cruel (And Once When War Was Kind) by mymythologyphasedidntend</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25663237">Five Times Love Was Cruel (And Once When War Was Kind)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/mymythologyphasedidntend/pseuds/mymythologyphasedidntend'>mymythologyphasedidntend</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Featured Character: Aphrodite [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Ancient Greek Religion &amp; Lore</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>5+1 Things, Ambiguous/Open Ending, F/M, I'm Bad At Tagging, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Sex, Light Angst, Mentioned Pregnancy, References to Ancient Greek Religion &amp; Lore</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 03:28:02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>864</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25663237</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/mymythologyphasedidntend/pseuds/mymythologyphasedidntend</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
      <p>I wrote this back in May and I just found it. Hope you like it!</p>
    </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Aphrodite/Ares, Aphrodite/Ares (Ancient Greek Religion &amp; Lore), Minor or Background Relationship(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Featured Character: Aphrodite [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1860808</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Five Times Love Was Cruel (And Once When War Was Kind)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I wrote this back in May and I just found it. Hope you like it!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>      Love was not cruel upon birth, or even on arrival at Olympus, but it did happen very, very quickly. She was Sex and Beauty incarnate, she knew that upon birth, but now these Gods, her fellow Gods, looked at her and treated her as such, and that was the first time she was cruel.</p>
<p>      There weren't as many gods as are known when she first arrived on Olympus, two of the Twelve Olympian have yet to be born, and Hestia was still one of them, but that didn't stop her from taking most of the Gods and some of the Goddesses to her bed, only to deny the rest of them for the rest of the time, or until they forgot, and implied to the spouses of her married lovers that she's taken their consort as hers, for the night.</p>
<p>      What topped off this act of cruelty was that she never took the King of Gods, despite his appeal and the message was clear; Love runs Olympus, or at the very least Sex.</p>
<hr/>
<p>      The second time love was cruel was on her wedding night. Hephaestus chained his Queen mother to her throne and refused to let her go unless he got Aphrodite's hand in marriage. Zeus agreed, but Aphrodite didn't understand how he could give her away if she was the daughter of Ouranos, but he was gone, so she went from one sky God to another.</p>
<p>      Refusing to have sex with her husband wasn't what was cruel, even though she did refuse, no what was cruel of her was how she lamented for his brother, about how much she loved him, how he loved her, how she wished to marry him before Zeus promised her to his wife's son. At that point, Love didn't love War, simply enjoyed the sex and company.</p>
<p>      Years later, when she finally let her husband into her bed, she said Ares was the better lover.</p>
<hr/>
<p>      The third time Love was cruel was when she was excepting for the first time. This was after she had taken to her martial bed, and when her husband first learned he was excited, only to be crushed when she told him he will be an uncle, not a father. War had sired her first, not Fire and Smith. Her husband never sired any of her children.</p>
<p>      War was the last to know, and Aphrodite will still ask Ares to forgive her for that. She says it was an act of cruelty, after all he had only provided the sperm, she had no reason to believe he'd care if the first two Gods of the next generation was born.</p>
<p>      But I'm reality, it was out of fear, which should be excepted when she was pregnant with Fear and Terror. She was afraid that he wouldn't want her or the children, after all, his own father barely payed mind to his Hera-born daughters and hated his son with her, and he holds Apollo and Artemis to cruelly high standards. She thought he'd be like that. Only there to chastise.</p>
<p>      She was wrong. Maybe War wasn't as cruel as Love.</p>
<hr/>
<p>      The next time she was cruel was with Adonis. She had been insulted by his mother, so she made her unnaturally desire her own father, and when the son was born, she brought him to Persephone to raise in the Underworld, cruel init of itself because Spring and The Dead had no children.</p>
<p>      And when the boy was grown she made him her consort, took him away from Persephone's arms as she had with the mother who birthed him. But Persephone wanted him as a lover as well, and brought the issue to Zeus, and her father split the boy's year in third, one with Love, one with Spring, and he chose the last. He always chose Love, compared Persephone lust of him to that of his parents. Was it cruel of her to not tell him she was the reason Myrrha lusted unnaturally in the first place?</p>
<p>      When her Adonis was hunting, her Ares sent a boar to kill him. Was it cruel to turn the youth into a flower instead of let him go the Underworld? Surely not, he bedded the King's wife and Queen.</p>
<hr/>
<p>      She didn't she Psyche as an act of cruelness, only pettiness. That was, until she learned her sweet Eros had taken her as a bride, and made her life miserable time and time again, only barely showing her kindness when she was made a Goddess and presented Olympus with her first child- Aphrodite's first grandchild- a beautiful baby girl, Hedone, the Goddess of Pleasure. Psyche didn't let her hold her babe until she apologized for what she had done to the girl. Maybe it pays to not be cruel.</p>
<hr/>
<p>      War was only kind to three types of people; his mother's daughters, his sons and daughters, and the mother's of those sons and daughters. Love had mothered them most, so it made since that centuries later, after Olympus is long forgotten, his sisters and sons and daughters names barley a whisper, he holds Love as she mourns the life they once had, even though Love could never be forgotten.</p>
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